Thea's Writing Asylum

Tag Archives: left 4 dead 2

I finally polished it off enough that I feel good about sending out the fourth draft of Locked In to a select group of people for proofreading. It’s my first work of fiction, and I am more than a little nervous at its reception.

At this stage, I feel like I can’t get much farther in a vacuum. I need more eyes. Right now any changes I would make are minute – word substitutions and random grammar edits that slipped though. If there is something huge wrong with it, then somehow I managed to miss it in the last three edits.

Now, for June’s story, Locked Out. (See what I did there?) I hope you like zombies. (You don’t? Tough luck, for now.) I love zombies, but I hate the rote “group of survivors” stories. If I want that, I can play Left 4 Dead 2. I’m looking at things from different angles. Locked In is about being a zombie. Locked Out is about the researchers trying to stop the infection while under seige. There might be a third on the horizon, but I think that’s enough spoilers about my zombie apocalypse for now.

The cast is called, the outline is written and I just need to put my fingers to the keyboard. The story exists, I just need to put it onto paper.

Locked Out will be much more complicated than Locked In, and possibly much longer. I wrote Locked In to get momentum, to prove to myself that I can do fiction. Locked Out is a more nuanced story as I’ve planned it, and the characters are much more human (they’re not zombies, which helps interaction). I see Locked Out as the practice precursor to my first novel. I have several ideas for novels, but I’m torn on whether to write the fantasy/steampunk epic, a hard sci-fi story on the edge of the galaxy or a cyberpunk future dystopia. All of these seem like a great way to get my geek on, but I don’t want to ruin them with inexperience.

I have some reviews to do tomorrow and the next day. A good week all things considered.